Whenever you buy a new bike, it’s mentioned in your owners manual that you should use only the recommended “xWy” (for eg 20W-40, 10W30 etc) grade of engine oil. Now what is this xWy and what precautions should I take to ensure I am doing the right thing.
Let us understand letter by letter.
- The primary letter 'x' represents the consistency number of oil when the motor is cold. For understanding let us accept this colder temperature as 0 degrees Celcius
- The letter in the middle of ie 'W', represents winter
- The third letter 'y' represents the thickness number of oil at motor working temperature. For understanding accept this working temperature as 100 degree Celcius.
- Consistency, basically, is only the thickness of a fluid. Higher this number, thicker is that fluid and clearly progressively impervious to stream over. Also, more slender the fluid simpler does it stream over.
For example, Kissan’s tomato ketchup is thicker than water. So ketchup would have a higher viscosity number (or viscosity index) and water would have a lower viscosity number. At the point when you put a drop of each on a table and attempt to slide, you would see that water effectively streams across while ketchup takes as much time as necessary to slide down. A similar standard is material to motor oils.
Understanding x & y
When we wrench our motors, the inward temperature is commonly cooler (when contrasted with a moment when the motor is running) and there are a great deal of interior motor parts which move and mess up with one another. Subsequently the oil is required to rapidly climb to every one of those parts and clung on them for better assurance. Also, this is the place the 'x' (first letter) comes to play. The lower the number, simpler it would be for it to stream across and conceal the roughing motor parts. Thus a 5w50 motor oil would be superior to anything a 20w50 motor oil here.
Let’s turn our attention to the second letter ‘y’. Consider an example when you have been riding for an hour continuously on your bike in scorching summer at stop and go city traffic. Do you understand the amount of heat generated and the temperature inside the engine at this instant? And we as a whole realize that under higher temperature fluids have this property of getting more slender. So we need a thicker oil.